CAPE TOWN - Former Eskom chairperson Zola Tsotsi claims that the Guptas assured him he would be fired if he did not help them.
Tsotsi claims that Tony Gupta personally told him that he was not a helping figure at Eskom for them and subsequently he could be fired.
This statements were made just 2 days before the 2015 State of the Nation Address by President Jacob Zuma
“I was approached by Tony Gupta who requested that we meet,” Tsotsi said.
“At the meeting, Tony told me ‘chairman, you are not helping us with anything. We are the ones who put you in the position you are in. We are the ones who can take you out!’
“My response was ‘Do what you have to do, and let me carry on with the job that the Cabinet appointed me to do!’ So ended that meeting.”
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown was apparently at said meeting.
The DA's Natasha Mazzone questions former Eskom CEO Zola Tsotsi. Mazzone is the Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises.
“At this meeting, she stated as follows: ‘chairman, I have received complaints from management and board members that you are interfering in management. Please refrain from doing so, because if you don't, I shall have to find someone else to do your job!’
“My response was, ‘minister, most board members hardly know what I look like, let alone not having worked with me yet. As for management, if scrutinising their decisions and behaviour and calling them to account constitutes interference with management, then I will happily continue doing so. If you had acceded to my request that we have regular briefing sessions, even this meeting would not have been necessary’.
“Where upon the minister responded by saying, ‘chairman, you go and do what you have to do, I will go and do what I have to, there is no reason for you and I to talk about anything.’ That is how the meeting ended. “It is at this time that I felt that some sinister clouds are gathering because the coincidence of the two events was not lost on me.”